Shake Your Money Maker For Wounded Warriors

By Nicholas Briano

Eddie teams up with the Wounded Warrior Project this Saturday for a benefit concert at the new CenterStage at Aviator.
Eddie Money, whose musical career has spanned more than three decades, will team up with the Wounded Warrior Project this Saturday for a benefit concert at the new CenterStage at Aviator outdoor concert venue.

Money frequently hosts benefit and fundraiser shows for charities and earlier this year released a single entitled “One More Soldier Coming Home,” a song he penned about a fallen soldier and the effect it would have on his or her loved ones.

“It is a great organization.” Money said about the Wounded Warriors. “When I started writing this song I began thinking about the widows of our fallen heroes or those parents that have sons and daughters in the military. It’s really dedicated to all of them.”

Money, who was born in New York, attended Franklin K. Lane High School before his family moved out to Long Island where he finished school at Island Trees High School in Levittown, New York.

Local band, “The Gray Riders” will open for Eddie Money. The band originated in 2004 from the Rockaway based Graybeards who host an adaptive water sports weekend each summer for Wounded Warriors Project.

Money says he is excited to come back to Brooklyn and perform in front of many friends and family. He says he remembers heading to Rockaway Beach often during the summer.

“Each summer my mother would take all of us to Rockaway Beach,” he said. “It was peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on the beach every summer.”

Money stays busy these days, touring extensively through the end of the year.

“I got five kids in the house,” he said jokingly. “I need to get out every chance I get! But to play in Brooklyn, is great, it’s going to be a lot of fun.”

But one of his kids, and the most musically focused, is his daughter, Jesse, now 22. She is touring with her father and provides backup vocals. She often performs a mini three song set somewhere around the halfway point of her father’s show.

“Every time she goes out there she does a really good show,” he said of his daughter. “She just finished writing a bunch of songs, and she has some serious ability and talent.”

Money’s best friend connected with his career was the legendary music promoter Bill Graham, who managed Eddie for many years while he was signed to Columbia Records. But it was the rise of MTV in the early ’80s that helped promote his career to new heights.

“Bill Graham was really huge for me because he was always a step ahead of the game. Graham had a premonition early on that rock and roll would be all over television,” he said. “We were one of the first rock acts to make music videos.”

But nowadays it is a clean, fun, family affair, but Money, while excited to play in Brooklyn, often seemed distracted with the nostalgia of the Brooklyn and Queens of old.

“It’s the only place you can still get a decent slice of pizza,” he said. “I’m going to gain at least 12 pounds while I am down there.”

Then he goes on to remember Rockaway Playland and riding the Cyclone in Coney Island, down to every detailed turn of the coaster.

“My wife says I live in the past … oh well maybe I do.”

While in Brooklyn, Money is insistent on trying to find one of those corner candy stores that he remembers while growing up as a kid.

“You know the type of candy store or shop where you can get a malted or some Mary Janes for a nickel. There’s gotta be some of those left.”

For more information about Money’s show tomorrow night, visit frontgatetickets. com or call 718-758-7500.